“’Dey’s de badger and de bah,
  En de funny lil hah,
  En de active lil flea,
  En de lil armadillah
  Dat sleeps widouter pillah,
  An dey all gottah mate but me—­ee—­ee!’

“Farva!” Kaviak gasped.

“Say, do a nigger breakdown,” solicited Potts.

“Ain’t room; besides, I can’t do it with blisters.”

They did the impossible—­they made room, and turned back the buffalo-skin.  Only the big Colonel, who was most in the way of all, sat, not stirring, staring in the fire.  Such a look on the absent, tender face as the great masters, the divinest poets cannot often summon, but which comes at the call of some foolish old nursery jingle, some fragment of half-forgotten folk-lore, heard when the world was young—­when all hearing was music, when all sight was “pictures,” when every sense brought marvels that seemed the everyday way of the wonderful, wonderful world.

For an obvious reason it is not through the utterances of the greatest that the child receives his first intimations of the beauty and the mystery of things.  These come in lowly guise with familiar everyday voices, but their eloquence has the incommunicable grace of infancy, the promise of the first dawn, the menace of the first night.

“Do you remember the thing about the screech-owl and the weather signs?” said the Colonel, roused at last by the jig on his toes and the rattle of improvised “bones” almost in his face.

“Reckon I do, honey,” said the Boy, his feet still flying and flapping on the hard earthen floor.

  “’Wen de screech-owl light on de gable en’
  En holler, Who—­ool oh—­oh!’”

He danced up and hooted in Kaviak’s face.

  “’Den yo’ bettah keep yo eyeball peel,
  Kase ‘e bring bad luck t’ yo’. 
  Oh—­oh! oh-oh!’”

Then, sinking his voice, dancing slowly, and glancing anxiously under the table: 

“’Wen de ole black cat widdee yalla eyes Slink round like she atterah mouse, Den yo’ bettah take keer yo’self en frien’s, Kase deys sholy a witch en de house.’”

An awful pause, a shiver, and a quick change of scene, indicated by a gurgling whoop, ending in a quacking: 

“’Wen de puddle-duck’e leave de pon’, En start t’ comb e fedder, Den yo’ bettah take yo’ omberel, Kase deys gwine tubbee wet wedder.’”

“Now comes the speckly rooster,” the Colonel prompted.

The Boy crowed long and loud: 

“’Effer ole wile rooster widder speckly tail Commer crowin’ befoh de do’, En yo got some comp’ny a’ready, Yo’s gwinter have some mo’.’”

Then he grunted, and went on all fours.  “Kaviak!” he called, “you take warnin’——­

  “’Wen yo’ see a pig agoin’ along—­’”

Look here:  Kaviak’s never seen a pig!  I call it a shame.

"‘Wen yo’ see a pig agoin’ along Widder straw en de sider ’is mouf, It’ll be a tuhble winter, En yo’ bettuh move down Souf.’"

He jumped up and dashed into a breakdown, clattering the bones, and screeching: